updated 04:35 pm EDT, Thu September 3, 2009

Philips intros subtitle shifting Blu-ray players

At the IFA 2009 show on Thursday, Philips has introduced four new Blu-ray players, including the flagship BDP9500. It has a number of video processing technologies Philips collectively calls Qdeo, which reduce noise, enhance color, and improve contrast, fine detail and depth. It also allows users to manually move where their subtitles appear on screen, and is DiVX Ultra and BD-Live compatible.

It further adds gold-plated A/V connections and support for 7.1-channel audio and has Burr-Brown DACs. A USB port lets users play video and music from connected thumb drives or external hard drives.

The BDP9100 supports the same extra-wide 21:9 aspect ratio as Philips' Cinema TVs and eliminates black spaces on those sets. It also has the same subtitle shifting as the BDP9500 and shares other features, including its 7.1-channel audio support, DiVX Ultra compatibility, BD-Live 2.0 and USB port.

The BDP7500 can be had in silver or black aluminum, and very similar features to the BDP9100, but adds touch-sensitive controls instead of traditional push buttons and a less exotic exterior.

Finally, the BDP3000 is the entry-level offering, foregoing the subtitles shift, USB connection and 21:9 aspect ratio support. It can still upconvert standard-definition DVDs and play back DiVX files.

Philips has not released prices or ship dates for any of the new Blu-ray players.